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Ooops...lol. During Howard Kurtz's tribute to former CNN contributor "The Prince of Darkness" Robert Novak, someone forgot to bleep out his "bullshit" remark.

KURTZ: But it was the battle over the war and his friendship with such sources as Karl Rove that would prove his undoing. Rove was one of two White House sources who told Novak that Valerie Plame, the wife of Bush critic Joe Wilson, was secretly employed by the CIA. And Novak's disclosure of that fact six years ago ignited a firestorm. He was called a traitor and worse.

Novak had little to say publicly about the leak investigation, even as he revealed his confidential sources to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

NOVAK: I don't think I did anything wrong, but as a practical matter, it wasn't a big scoop, you know. It was just a throwaway line, and the whole column was not abusive toward Joe Wilson in any way.

KURTZ: He began to seem a relic of an earlier era. CNN dropped "CROSSFIRE" and "CAPITAL GANG," and at one of his increasingly rare appearances, Novak lost his temper while arguing with James Carville.

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: ... is watching you. Show them you're tough.

NOVAK: Well, I think that's bullshit. And I hate that. Just let me go.

ED HENRY, CNN SR. WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: About this Senate race, James, that...

KURTZ: He left the network soon afterwards, joining Fox News, and published his memoir titled, fittingly enough, "The Prince of Darkness."

Thirteen months ago, the man who never seemed to stop arguing was sidelined by cancer.

[Photo h/t
Think Progress]

Well, we've known for some time that Patrick Fitzgerald doesn't mess around. Just ask Rod Blagejovich and Scooter Libby. Yesterday Hal Turner, Sean Hannity's erswhile friend, got the same lesson:

CHICAGO—Hal Turner, an intermittent internet radio talk show host and blogger, was arrested today by FBI agents at his home in North Bergen, N.J., on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb.

Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed “outrage” over the June 2, 2009, handgun decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, further stating, among other things: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.” The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.

Turner, 47, of North Bergen, N.J., was arrested this morning after FBI agents went to his residence to execute a search warrant. He was charged with threatening to assault and murder three federal judges with intent to retaliate against them for performing official duties in a criminal complaint filed today in U.S. District Court in Chicago. He is scheduled to have an initial court appearance at 12:30 p.m. tomorrow (Thursday) before U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael A. Shipp in U.S. District Court in Newark.

“We take threats to federal judges very seriously. Period,” said Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, who announced the charges with Robert D. Grant, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Amanda Terkel at Think Progress has more details.

Turner was already facing charges in Connecticut for similar threats issued to state officials there.

There is at least a touch of irony here: Turner's previous threats involving Judge Lefkow were referenced in these posts. Turner wrote:

“Apparently, the 7th U.S. Circuit court didn’t get the hint after those killings. It appears another lesson is needed.”

Some of us wondered if Turner hadn't crossed the line into issuing real threats back in 2005. Now it appears the FBI has decided he has.

This is welcome news, but it's probably long overdue.

Now if only the FBI would take threats against abortion-clinic doctors every bit as seriously.

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Despite the fact that he completely contradicted himself from his statements last week, Karl Rove had the nerve go to on Hannity & Colmes and chastise the President-elect Obama for how he and his team are handling their response to the Fitzgerald investigation of Rod Blagojevich.

When Rove decides to explain his role in the outing of Valerie Plame, or his role in the prosecution of Don Siegelman (for which he has failed to appear before Congress despite a subpoena), then maybe anyone should care about his opinions and his regard for the rule of law. At least it earned him a spot on Keith Olbermann's Worst Person list.

Rove and the rest of the Villagers that cannot wait to see how all of this plays out. They're all too happy to pass judgment before they know what's going on with the Blagojevich scandal; perhaps they should just shut their yaps in the meantime.

If there were actually any respect for the rule of law left in this country, Rove would be sitting in a jail cell in the basement of the Congress if nowhere else instead of being allowed to spew propoganda on Fox News.

News this morning that U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has indicted Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich predictably brought cheers from the conservative chattering classes. Blagojevich's arrest over the "pay for play" Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama and myriad other jaw-dropping corruption schemes Fitzgerald simply deemed "staggering" led the right-wing Hot Air blog among others to proclaim "Fitzmas arrives early this year." Of course, when the crime was obstruction and perjury over the outing covert CIA operative Valerie Plame as political payback by the Bush administration, the mouthpieces of the right slandered the Republican Fitzgerald as "politically motivated", "disgusting", "a lunatic" - and worse.

A walk down memory lane provides a rich history of the vitriol directed at Fitzgerald by conservatives circling the wagons around Karl Rove, Cheney chief-of-staff Scooter Libby and the Bush White House. In December 2003, Deputy Attorney General James Comey (who later ran afoul of Bush loyalists over the President's illegal NSA domestic surveillance program) described his Plamegate Special Counsel appointee Fitzgerald as "an absolutely apolitical career prosecutor" with a "sterling reputation for integrity and impartiality." But as the noose began to tighten around Libby's neck during Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of Plame by Robert Novak, the Republican amen corner went after the messenger.

In the fall of 2005, Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison rushed to Libby's defense in the wake of his indictment by Fitzgerald. As the opening salvo of the tried and true "criminalization of politics" defense, Hutchison sneered at what she derided as Fitzgerald's "perjury technicality":

"That if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

In the ensuing conservative war on Fitzgerald, former MSNBC host Tucker Carlson was among the first goose-stepping soldiers to volunteer. On October 24, 2005, Carlson regretted that the Bush White House hadn't started smearing Fitz much earlier. Carlson applauded Hutchison's line and said of President Bush, "He should have done that a long time ago," adding:

"I think politically [the Bush administration] did very much the wrong thing by saying nice things about Patrick Fitzgerald some months ago - 'he's a man of integrity,' 'he's a good guy,' 'we have complete confidence he's going do the right thing,' etc., etc. - making it now almost impossible for the White House, even on background, to attack the guy."

By February 2007 and with Libby's commutation still months away, Carlson was frothing at the mouth when it came to the topic of Patrick Fitzgerald. Carlson, who once had glowingly approved Ken Starr's inquisition of Bill Clinton, said of Libby's prosecutor:

"You shouldn't have these freelancers, like the lunatic Fitzgerald, running around destroying people's lives for no good reason. I hate this trial."

As it turns out, Tucker Carlson's fury towards Fitz was genetic.

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